Surf Forecast Surf Report
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Shell Island Surf Stats

All swells

(any wind direction)

Good Surf

(light / offshore wind)

This picture shows the variation of swells directed at Shell Island through a typical March. It is based on 3455 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Shell Island. In this particular case the best grid node is 31 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened 61% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSE (which was the same as the prevailing wind direction). Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Shell Island and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Shell Island, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average March, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Shell Island run for about 39% of the time.

Also see Shell Island wind stats

Compare Shell Island with another surf break

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